The most useful module is the Animation pack, which includes the Animation Tweener palette. This displays all animated objects, as well as any camera and light animations. You can animate several objects using variable ‘tween’ timings, as if they were on separate animation timeline tracks. The interface is slow to update in places, but the finished result looks fine once exported to QuickTime.

Import options include 3DS, QuickDraw 3D and Sketchup formatted files. Once you bring them into a 3D Toolbox document you can rescale, retexture and perform further edits before animating and exporting them.

The Camera and Alignment pack is useful for animation too, with palettes for aligning objects, aligning the camera and nudging objects into place and switching the cursor options.

Several actions, such as Apply Gravity or Add Base Plate, provide workflow shortcuts when working in 3D space. The base plate is a ground plane to cast shadows onto while rendering, but you’ll need the Light & Render pack to use anything but wireframe and preview rendering.

The application crashed a couple of times, so it’s essential to save your work, but this is a useful 3D tool with potential for Mac users on a budget.